Archive for minorities – Page 2

After the devastating election losses in late 2012, the GOP spent millions to find out how and where they missed the boat. They analyzed what they were doing wrong and publicly took to the airwaves to announce during 2013 that they were going to start reaching out to those who voted against their party and their platform. In essence, it was a plan to open the tent flaps and invite more people into their circus.

The RNC report from early last year called the Growth and Opportunity Project, urged the party to be more inclusive after the dismal electoral results among women, minorities, immigrants, college educated and the poor during the 2012 presidential election. This study, at a cost of millions of dollars was immediately hailed as a panacea and would be implemented immediately.

Let's see how that went.

The plan, despite being publicly lauded by the mouthpieces for the GOP was, in reality, scoffed at behind closed doors. There was really no intention of welcoming new members into their private club without a privileged pedigree.

During the nearly one year since the "autopsy" of the Republican loss led by party chairman Reince Priebus, there's been some moment. It wasn't forward nor necessarily backward. It could at best be called, treading water. Or maybe hoping for a miracle.

The "autopsy" called for the the Republicans to increase it's outreach to women. Instead, they pushed for restrictions on women's reproductive rights already adjudicated in Roe V. Wade by the US Supreme Court.

The plan called for outreach to immigrants. The GOP killed, by refusing to vote, the Senate immigration plan because it had a path to citizenship and the Republicans feared the new voters would not vote for the Red party because they had been systematically persecuted by the GOP for so many years.

The plan called for a jobs bill to improve the economy. The current 113th Congress voted that down numerous times during the last session. They even forced a government shutdown that cost the tax payers $26 Billion and netted us nothing for the effort.

The Growth and Opportunity Project called for outreach to the LGBT community. Build up the Log Cabin Republicans. Instead the party fought that minority with law suits even after the SCOTUS struck down DOMA, opening the door for same sex marriage.

The proposed road map was to reach out to racial minority voters in rural areas. Instead they GOP-led state legislatures enacted stricter voter registration laws making it harder for minorities to have an equal opportunity to cast a vote. This fear that Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Indians and others might actually get a chance to speak up was muffled in legislative tricks and gerrymandering to making it difficult to qualify to have your voice heard or counted. Ask former Speaker of the House, republican Jim Wright or current state senator Wendy Davis in Texas how those new, restrictive laws are doing.

So it seems they're acting in denial of their own multi-million dollar plan to improve their standing and increase their chances to win the 2014 and 2016 elections. If so, who are they really going after?

The country club crowd. The Republicans have pushed through continued tax loopholes strictly for the rich. They've targeted but one group -- the one they already had -- the top 2%. By fighting health care, by denying minorities their constitutional rights, by tamping down immigration reform, by killing jobs bills and by regulating women's health care issues What's left is not a big target, but the GOP's focusing on it, anyway. It's the old, white guy.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus vowed in 2014 that his group would spend time in communities it has overlooked in the past.

“As a party, Republicans resolve to make 2014 about engaging with more people in communities all across America,” Priebus said in a statement ringing in the New Year. “We’ll spend our time welcoming new people to our party and listening to people in places where we haven’t spent enough time in years past. I look forward to all this year has to offer.”

It's hard but lets take the chairman at his word, because he said the very same thing nearly a year ago when the results of the study were first made public. Everything he and his party did last year was contrary to that.

Some things never change, the leopard and its spots, the zebra and its stripes and the GOP and it's arrogance. So next time you're at your private country club, playing a round of golf with Skip, Chip and Thurston Buffington Conroy III, don't be surprised if they don't hit you up for a contribution to GOP American Vision PAC.

Go tee it up and have a great round. Remember, par for the GOP championship course is 72, the same age (and in some cases, IQ) as the average GOP member.

It's never to early to stage a fight for people's rights. And in this case, it's the voter rights act, or what's left of it. As you'll see below, Chris Hayes does a great job summing up the issues that are happening thanks to the scurrilous political right. If they don't succeed in stopping selected groups of voters, these wingnuts will lose their grip on power. And make no mistake, they do have the upper hand in power in most of the country, and not just the south. Take the case of Republican Iowa Secretary of State, Matt Schultz:

This movement of tamping down minority vote has been with us since reconstruction. Before that, Blacks and other minorities were just plain denied the right to vote, even if born here. Color was the obstacle. Jim Crow laws replaced just straight refusal which was followed by gangs literally beating minority voters, sometimes to death for even showing up at a poll. And then again there were the poll taxes.

But these measures were about hate, not fraud... or so they appeared. Then next step up the illusion trail to keep minorities away is the current voter fraud issue. It's so rampant that candidates have based their entire statewide campaign on stamping out voter fraud -- and won. That tired scare tactic has worked. Yet when you run on a platform, you are usually called into service upon taking office to move on the issue.

That brings us to Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz (R). He did as promised and pulled back the curtain on rampant voter fraud in his state. Huffpo revealed this:

Since taking office in 2011, Schultz has made safeguarding the ballot box from fraud a top state priority, striking a two-year deal with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation in 2012 that directed $280,000 of federal funds toward voter fraud inquiries. Additionally, a full-time agent was hired and assigned to pursue voter fraud cases.

The results were as reported by Chris Hayes in the video above. There is really no true voter fraud. There's bigotry fraud. And that's what this is all about, summed up perfectly by a well-respected Republican

In August, former U.S. Secretary of StateColin Powell criticized the argument of North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) that his approval of a more restrictive voting bill would combat voter fraud.

“You can say what you like, but there is no voter fraud,” Powell said at the CEO Forum in Raleigh, N.C. “How can it be widespread and undetected?”

Voter ID laws are not going away anytime soon. So maybe it's time to take the campaign to get picture approved ID's to those without. A door to door program of volunteers to help people accumulate the necessary papers and documents, and then give them a ride to their DMV to get free photo ID's might be what it takes. But when those eligible voters get their identification, they can go from being denied, to doing the denying -- denying the racist incumbents who earlier denied them the right to vote from returning to office. Give them a dose of their own medicine.

Looks like New York City, with Bill deBlasio coming in this January, might finally be safe for minorities to walk the sidewalks without fear of random and humiliating, arbitrary police stops. Certainly Mike Bloomberg and his police Chief Kelly were all for stop and frisk and the terror it inflicted on their city. But up state, in Rochester, things have gone even further. It's stop and arrest -- skipping the frisk part.

Three Black high school kids, waiting for the school bus to come and take them to basketball practice were arrested a week ago when police officer told them to “disperse,” even though witnesses said they did nothing wrong.

Disperse? Isn't that usually a term usually reserved for crowds, mobs and unruly gangs? It's hardly appropriate for three high school students waiting at an established bus stop for their bus. Isn't that why they call it a bus stop? They boys explained why they were there and that's when the police did what they set out to do initially. They arrested these three Black teenage boys.

Oh, did I mention that all three are honor students as well as athletes? And did I forget to say that none of them had ever been arrested before?

This is what happens when racists are cops. I bet a simple, "We're waiting for the school bus" would have been fine if these were white kids. But they weren't. And as such, they were singled out.

The police have their own account of this incident. According to WROC-TV:

A police report claimed that the boys were blocking “pedestrian traffic while standing on a public sidewalk…preventing free passage of citizens walking by and attempting to enter and exit a store…Your complainant gave several lawful clear and concise orders for the group to disperse and leave the area without complaince [sic].”

Coach Scott [also African-American] arrived just as the boys were being handcuffed and was also threatened with arrest.

“He [the police officer] goes on to say, ‘If you don’t disperse, you’re going to get booked as well,’” Scott recalled. “I said, ‘Sir, I’m the adult. I’m their varsity basketball coach. How can you book me? What am I doing wrong? Matter of fact, what are these guys doing wrong?’”

Check out this short news piece to get the fuller story -- but this kind of bulls**t has got to stop.

50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in an effort to abolish wage discrimination based on gender. Half a century later, the Obama administration is pushing Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, designed to make wage differences more transparent. Republicans in the House are against it, just the thought of women making the same as men for doing the same job in the same location is abhorrent to everything the GOP stands for. When the Paycheck Fairness Act came up for a vote this past April, Republicans immediately killed the effort by a vote of 226 to 192 -- party lines. No misogyny there!

The Republicans are constantly being accused of opposition to plans while never offering up an alternative. Well, this time they have one. Here's an advanced look at their secret Memorandum, smuggled out to us from UltraViolet: